Black Project Spontaneous & Wild Ales

In August 2016, Sarah and James Howat of Former Future Brewing announced that they would be shifting their brewing operations entirely to Black Project Spontaneous & Wild Ales, a side project that began within Former Future in 2014. That ambitious decision to focus solely on spontaneous & wild styles has proven fruitful (no pun intended), as they’ve garnered three GABF medals in the past four years. This year’s ambitious release of Roswell, a spontaneously fermented barrel-aged, Lambic-inspired series featuring six heavily fruited variants. Each variant take exhibited brilliant unique individual fruit-forward notes while carrying a delicate nuanced base just a perfect touch of tartness. With a recently expanded barrel-aging facility and more room to experiment on releases like their recent Altair, a tart table beer with wild-foraged Black Trumpet Mushrooms, and Lunex, their three year blended spontaneous ale with Corvus coffee, Black Project has already established itself as one of Colorado’s best in the field of sour & wild beers. -PorchDrinking.com

The 2,016th year of the Common Era has come and gone, leaving many high and low points in its wake. Some people may argue that this was one of the worst years in recent memory, but PorchDrinkers don’t like to focus on negatives. We are a mostly optimistic lot, who choose to remember all the positive and happy moments. For many of us, those moments began with a sip of a surprisingly great beer. Together, as a team, we want to to celebrate the best beers of 2016.

A call went out to the entire PorchDrinking.com staff. We wanted to know what great beers they discovered this year. Below, you will find the answer. Without further ado, I’ll turn this over to the writers and editors, who will sound off on their favorite beers and describe those libations that made 2016 so memorable.

In our humble opinion, these are the best beers of 2016!

Peach Rye Dreamland | Black Project Spontaneous and Wild Ales

Submitted by Jared Hardy

It’s not exactly a new headline that Denver’s Black Project Brewing makes great beers. The Peach Rye release of their popular Dreamland series just happened to be my favorite in a long line of exceptional beers. Dreamland is a golden sour solera (fresh beer replaces the beer pulled out to be kegged, so that at any time you’ve got beer of varying ages all mixed together). This particular version was especially complex with the addition of 84lbs of peaches and aging in a very fresh A.D. Law’s Secale Rye Whiskey barrel.

Tristan’s Other Picks from 2016

LUNEX Corvus Coffee Sour | Black Project Spontaneous and Wild Ales

One flavor profile that still blows my mind when done right is the combination of coffee and sour beer. Crooked Stave’s Nightcap was the first to expose me to this game changing flavor profile but James and Sarah at Black Project has created a beer that rivals that initial experience via their Lunex Corvus Coffee Sour. -PorchDrinking.com